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Storybook: The Little Red Hen

Lesson Plans

The following lesson plans have been developed for the project teachers to try out some strategies and activities to enhance young children’s interest and skills in learning English. The storybook “The Little Red Hen” is used as the organizing focus of the English learning experiences during the tryout. The story not only provides children with pleasurable learning experiences but also serves as a springboard to the development of reading strategies, phonological awareness, and other components of language learning such as thinking skills and reference skills.

Teachers may use these plans as a reference for the teaching procedures in shared reading. The number of sessions for each storybook and design of follow-up activities should be decided as appropriate.

Session 1 Teaching Procedures

Introduction and warm-up

Activities in this part include playing a game, talking, reading, writing and making word trees.

Play a Kim’s game with the children. Show them the picture of a farm from any Picture Word Book for 30 seconds and make them name the farm animals they can see.

Remind them that they have compiled some word books when they were reading “The Gingerbread Man”. Suggest that they can include these farm animals in their word books about “animals”.

Reading a new story Display the cover of the big book “The Little Red Hen”. Have children look at the illustrations on the cover. To help them use picture clues, you may ask: What is this place? Is it in the town or the countryside? What is this animal? What is it doing?

Provide practice in making predictions by asking: Can you see a house? Who lives

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there? What is this story about? Use children’s predictions to set a purpose for reading.

Invite some children to point to the title. Encourage them to read aloud the title. Teacher reads the title again, tracking each word and using natural intonation and pace. Ask children to echo read the title.

Take the children on a picture walk through the story until p.13. Teacher may ask: What animals are there? Where are they? What are they doing?

Read the story aloud until p.13, tracking each word as you read and using natural intonation and pace. Ask questions to involve the children in the reading process. You might make the following observation: Are children able to follow along with you? Do children enjoy listening to this story?

Activities Put pictures of the four animals from the story on the blackboard. Put the word cards (a hen, a duck, a cat, a dog) next to the pictures.

Beginning with “a hen”, show children how to use appropriate adjectives to describe the hen in the story. Introduce the 3 adjectives one by one and in the right sequence i.e. “a red hen”, “a little red hen”, “a busy little red hen”. Arrange the three expressions on the board with the word “hen” in the same position vertically. Go over the pronunciation with them. Then teach them how to read each expression with proper rhythm and intonation.

Make children frame the adjectives used to describe the other three animals on p.3.

Use gestures and picture cues to explain the meaning of “lazy”. Encourage them to refer to picture cues and use more adjectives to describe these three animals, e.g. a duck, a

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lazy duck, a lazy white duck, a lazy big white duck; a dog, a brown dog, a fat brown dog, a lazy fat brown dog; a cat, a brown cat, a pretty brown cat, a lazy pretty brown cat. Go over the pronunciation with them. Teach them how to read the whole expression with proper rhythm and intonation.

Distribute worksheets to let children record what they have just practised in groups.

Encourage children to practise how to describe the animals in their group or own word books on “animals”.

Focus reading practice for p.2 and p.3. Emphasize on reading p.3 with proper intonation.

Write the word “hen” on the board. Invite the children to read the word. Cover the letters “en” and make the children read the initial sounds in “hen”. Underline the first letter and invite them to find another word which begins with the same letter sound on p.4 (help).

Tell children to develop their group’s word tree on initial h. Put “hen” on the tree trunk. Put “help” on an apple to be the first word on the word tree. Invite children to look up other English books to find more words with the same letter sound to add to their word trees.

Frame n in “not” and invite children to read the letter sound. With the same procedures as initial h, tell children to make another word tree for the initial n sound as in “not”.

With the same procedure, teach children to make one more word tree on the ending m sound as in “farm”. Demonstrate how the two lips should be closed to produce the ending m sound properly.

Call children’s attention to the point that

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there are two groups of words with the ending m sound as in “farm” and “time”. As they end in different spelling, they do not belong to the same group.

Rereading the story and assigning home activities

Distribute the small books to the children. Call their attention to the title of the book.

Let children listen to the story tape on “The Little Red Hen” or read the story aloud until p.13, tracking each word and using natural intonation and pace. Encourage them to chime in at any part of the story. Emphasize the importance in the use of gestures, tone and expressions in reading.

Encourage children to bring the books home and read the title and the story until p.13 to their family or themselves.

Distribute worksheets and teach them how to write about two animals before the next lesson. Demonstrate to children how to describe the animals in their own word books on animals.

Distribute the worksheets on the word trains for the initial h, n and ending m. Demonstrate to children how they can make their own word trains at home with the experience of making word trees in the school. Tell them to enter the words from the story book first and then look up their own collection of English books e.g. their old coursebooks or Children’s Picture Word Books to find at least 5 more items to add to their group’s word trees before the next lesson.

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Activities in this part include reading, discussing, singing songs, making word trees, playing a game and role-playing.

Display the big book cover and invite volunteers to read the title. Let the whole class read the title together afterwards.

Invite children to share their word trains with the whole class.

Invite some children to come out and show their word books on animals to the whole class. In turns they read aloud the descriptions from the worksheets. The whole class look at the drawings/cutouts, listen to the descriptions and decide which animals is being described.

Reading the story Read the story aloud up to p.13, tracking each word as you read and using natural intonation and pace. Encourage the children to chime in whenever they can. Pause at different places from p.2 to p.11 to ask questions to help the children understand the story better.

Call children’s attention to the use of the phrase “Once upon a time” at the beginning of a story. Ask them if they have come across the same phrase in other stories e.g. “The Gingerbread Man”.

Point out the use of open and close quotation marks on p.4 and p.5. They are used in stories when people are speaking to one another. Help children find out who is talking, using the punctuation marks as cues.

Explain the meaning of the question beginning with “Who will” with gestures.

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Show children pictures of some wheat seeds, wheat, flour and bread from a Picture Word Book. Use gestures to explain the meaning of “plant this wheat”, “cut the wheat”, “make the flour” and “make the bread”.

Put speech bubbles in the big book to explain when characters are talking. Point out the use of question marks and exclamation marks. Teach children the use of appropriate intonation when reading sentences that end with these punctuation marks.

Invite four volunteers to take part in a role-play activity. Let them put on the animals’ hats to role play the hen, the duck, the cat and the dog.

Read the story once through from p.4 to p.10. The four children will say the parts of the four animals. The teacher and the whole class will be the narrator. Emphasize the importance of the use of appropriate gestures, tones and expressions in reading and speaking.

Distribute one set of “animal hats” to each group and ask children to label them first. Let children do the role-play in small groups. Make them pay special attention to the use of gestures, tones and expressions when speaking.

Activities Play the tape of the song “London Bridge is falling down” to the children.

Tell children to replace the lyrics with the words from the story and sing the first four stanzas of the song “Who will help me?” with gestures.

Have children put on the “animals hats” and sing the song in groups.

Distribute the song sheets. Have children sing the song together with the help of

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picture cues. Write the word “it” on the board and

underline the letter “i”. Ask children to read the word and then only the short i sound when the letter “t” is covered. In this way they experience how to use analogy to identify the target letter sound.

Invite children to turn to p. 3 and find other words with the same vowel sound. Tell them to look for words with the letter “i”. Based on what they suggest, write the words “lived” and “with” on the board and underline the letter “i”.

Tell the children that they can put all these words together and develop a class word tree for the short i sound.

Put “it” on the tree trunk. Invite children to find other words with the same letter sound on p.4 to put on the word tree. The other words are “will”, “little” and “did”.

Using the same procedure, let them develop another class word tree on the short e sound as in “red”. Other words from the same storybook are “help”, “hen” and “end”.

Distribute one set of phonics game to each group. Explain the rules and show the children how to play the game in groups.


Read the story aloud up to p.13 and encourage children to chime in whenever they can.

Encourage children to sing the song and read the story up to p.13 to their family or to themselves.

Distribute worksheets to the children and tell them to make their own word trains at home for the two vowel sounds they have practised at school today. Tell children to use the words from the storybook before they look up their own collection of English books e.g. their old textbooks or Children’s Picture Word Books to find as many items as possible before the next lesson.

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Activities in this part include singing, reading, discussing, role-playing and making small books.

Invite volunteers to share their word trains with the whole class.

Display the cover of the storybook and invite volunteers to read the title. Let the whole class read the title together afterwards.

Reading the story Read the story aloud up to p.13, tracking each word as you read and using appropriate intonation. Encourage the children to chime in whenever they can.

Ask children about the story that explains the four steps for making bread and list them on the board. Ask: How can the duck, the cat and the dog help the Little Red Hen? What does she say to them?

Frame or circle the question “Who will help me plant the seeds?” in the big book and then cover “Who will help me”. Tell children that “plant the seed” is the first step in making bread. Let children find descriptions of the other steps in the same way.

Go over the pronunciation with them. Teach them how to read the whole expressions with proper rhythm and intonation.

Turn to p.14 and let children talk about the 4 steps with the picture cues only.

Ask children how the story ends. Turn to p.12 and ask: What is Little Red Hen holding? Where did she get it from? Point to the oven and ask: What is this? Can you remember? You have learnt it in the story “The Gingerbread Man’? What is ready? How do the animals look? How do you

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know that? Why are they so happy? What do they all want to eat? What does Little Red Hen think? What will she do? Ask children to predict the ending of the story.

Turn to p.14, make the children look at the pictures carefully and ask: Will Little Red Hen give the bread to the three lazy animals? Why? How do you know that? Invite children to read aloud the sentence together.

Assign different groups to read the parts for the narrator, the hen, the duck, the cat and the dog. Read the story once through together.

Let them practise in groups afterwards. Tell them to pay special attention to the use of gestures, tone and expression in speaking and reading.

Activities Distribute worksheets to the children. Tell them to compile a book on “Making bread”. They can write their own names on the cover. This shows they have written the book themselves.

Explain that they should first arrange the order of the pictures to show the four steps for making bread. Then they write a sentence under each picture to describe each step. Afterwards they can list the ingredients for bread on the last page.

Show the pupils a sample book on “Making bread”. Tell them that they have to design a cover for their own book.

Let children find out more about the ingredients for bread. You may say: Is there only flour in bread? What does Little Red Hen put with the flour and mix

together? Let’s turn to p.11. Can you find it from the picture there? Put the different ingredients on the blackboard and go over the pronunciation with them.

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Distribute some authentic wrapping paper or plastic bags for bread. Let children find out that there are different ingredients in different kinds of bread.

Tell children to sing the first four stanzas of the song “Who will help me?” together.

Have them refer to the song sheets and sing the last two stanzas together with gestures.


Play the tape of “The Little Red Hen” and encourage children to chime in whenever they can. You might make the following observation: Are children interested in joining in? Who seems to have problems in trying to follow the story?

Let children sing the song “Who will help me?” a few times together.

Encourage children to read the story aloud and sing the song a few times to their family or to themselves at home.

Distribute worksheets and ask children to make the mini books on “Making bread” at home. They may examine some authentic bags or wrapping paper to find out the ingredients for different bread.

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Activities in this part include reading, talking, singing, role playing, writing, acting and making small books.

Invite volunteers to share their books on “Making bread”.

Reading the story Read aloud the story, tracking each word as you read and using natural intonation and pace. Encourage the children to chime in whenever they can.

Check if children remember the story content. You may ask: How does the Little Red Hen make bread? What are the 4 steps? List the 4 steps on the board after children have answered the questions. Then ask: What does the Little Red Hen do in the end? Why?

Invite four volunteers to play the parts of the four animals. The teacher and the rest of the class act as the narrator. Distribute paper hats to the 3 pupils playing the parts of the lazy animals and an apron to the pupils playing the part of Little Red Hen.

Activities Play the tape of the song “Old MacDonald had a farm” and invite the children to sing together.

Call their attention to the animal sounds. Put the words on the blackboard and go over the pronunciation with them.

Ask children to sing the song once together. Distribute song sheets and let them sing together once again.

Read the story once through. Make children add the animals’ sounds after each animal has said “Not I!” and “I will”

e.g. “Not I! Quack, quack!” said the duck. Distribute paper hats and aprons to each

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group. Invite the children to work in groups and act out the whole story wearing the paper hats and aprons.

Show them the picture of a dish of fruit salad. Ask children what fruit is used to make fruit salad.

Ask them to suggest how fruit salad is made. Put the pictures and word cards for the following steps on the blackboard: “Wash the apples.” (and other fruit), “Cut the apples.” (and other fruit), “Mix the fruit.” and “Eat the fruit salad.”

Distribute materials for the game “Making fruit salad”. Children work in groups. They pretend to wash/cut/mix some fruit to make some fruit salad. The cut fruit items are stuck on a paper bowl.

Distribute some worksheets and ask pupils to rewrite the story “The Little Red Hen” in groups. They can choose the animals they like but the food they make is fruit salad this time.

Encourage them to include the picture of the fruit salad in their storybook. Explain that this makes their storybook more attractive and helps the readers understand the story better.

Tell children that each group should design a book cover and give a name to their group storybook. All group members’ names are put on the cover as authors.

Invite volunteers to read their own books to the whole class. Display the books in the classroom afterwards.

Encourage them to read storybooks written by the other groups.

Sharing time and suggesting follow-up work

Invite children to read aloud the whole story together. Assign children to play different roles in the story.

List the different activities on “The Little Red Hen” and ask children which activity they liked most.

Encourage children to sing the song, read

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the story and act out any part of the story whenever there is a suitable chance.

Encourage children to write stories on how some food is made. They can also follow the story line of “The Little Red Hen” but use a new ending.

Prepare a set of storybooks with similar themes and language items. Encourage children to borrow these storybooks from the class library to read at home.

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